Yiannis Gabriel
Biographic Data
| ID | 3684535 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yiannis Gabriel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yiannis |
| FAMILY NAME | Gabriel |
| SIGNATURE | GABRIEL Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 449 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Work, consumption and capitalism
We know not to judge a book by its cover, but Lynne Pettinger’s book has a particularly eye-catching one – an image of denim cloth shot close up and realistic enough to be taken for real, the title
From Science as a Vocation to Science as a Game
Against a generalized loss of meaning in society, social scientists find it hard to undertake relevant research that addresses problems facing our world. Science has turned from a vocation aimed at improving the lot of humanity to a careerist game dominated by publishing hits in starred journals. Instrumental rewards replace the passion for discovery and the intrinsic quest for knowledge. Competition among academics and academic institutions, suc…
Conclusion
This chapter concludes the book by examining various possible objections that readers may raise by adopting the perspective of a sympathetic but critical reviewer, and considers how social science research may break out of its self-inflicted iron cage and renew its commitment to addressing the major issues and problems that face our world today. A number of different objections are considered and refuted. These include the charges that our argume…
Recovering Meaning by Reforming Academic Identities and Practices
Part II offers a number of proposals and suggestions for recovering meaning in social science research at the individual, institutional, and policy levels. These measures offer the prospect of many small ‘wins’ through which the system can be reformed, rather than one sweeping programme for change. This chapter addresses the identities of individual researchers and the research methodologies they use in their work, and encourages a different appr…
Institutions Encouraging Competition, Instrumentalism, and Meaningless Research
The rise of mass education has led to mass research—quantity dominates quality. A ruthless institutional competition for status, plus academics pushing to get published in the ‘right’, career-enhancing journals, has led to the fetishization of journal outputs even when they are of little meaning or value to society. This situation is now endemic within the system of academic research and publication, and is strongly driven and sustained by academ…
Return to Meaning
This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the li…
Bridging the contradictions of social constructionism and psychoanalysis in a study of workplace emotions in India
This paper makes a contribution to the study of emotions in organizations by offering a systematic juxtaposition and cross-fertilization of psychoanalytic and social constructionist approaches. These two traditions have found it hard to communicate in the past when addressing organizational emotions. Points of similarity and tension between them are discussed in connection with two critical case studies of female Indian managers discussing their …
Organizations and their consumers
The last 20 years or so have seen a far-reaching reconfiguration of the characters that dominate the world of organizations. For much of its life, the study of organizations was dominated by two central characters, the manager and the worker, whose relationship with all its tensions, conflicts and accommodations unfolded with within a broader environment of markets, governments, shareholders, social institutions, technological forces and so forth…
Reflexivity and beyond – a plea for imagination in qualitative research methodology
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, important as reflexivity is, it does not constitute the gold standard of qualitative research. Instead the author makes a plea for the use of sociological imagination. Design/methodology/approach – The paper makes use of data from the ISI Web of Science database to demonstrate the increasing popularity of the concept of reflexivity. Findings – All researchers exercise reflexivity in as m…
Luck of the draw? Serendipity, accident, chance and misfortune in organization and design
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,In proving foresight may be vain:The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ menGang aft agley,An’ lea'e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis'd joy!(Robert Burns) Designer
Job loss and its aftermath among managers and professionals
Based on longitudinal fieldwork with unemployed managers and professionals in their 50s, the article examines the meaning of job loss to these people and charts their subsequent efforts to restore their lives. The article identifies core similarities in their experiences and discerns different narrative strategies through which they have tried to make sense of their dismissal and sustain their selfhood. For all, job loss was a considerable trauma…
The marriage of story and metaphor
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due in part to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organization
The marriage of story and metaphor
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due, in part, to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organizatio
Engaging with genocide
Genocide has been an enduring and profoundly disturbing feature of history. Yet, scholars of organization and management have approached it in a rather limited and marginal way. In this article, the authors propose that genocide far from constituting a tragic phenomenon at the margins of contemporary society raises questions that go to the heart of organization and management studies. In particular, they argue that genocide represents a challenge…
Storytelling and Change
Change spawns stories and stories can trigger change. Stories can also block change and can define what constitutes change. In this Introduction to the special issue, the special issue editors explore some of the current debates on stories and organizational change, introduce the articles that are included in the issue, identify some prominent themes (power, identity construction and defence, plurivocality, knowledge transfer, boundary unfreezing…
Organizing Words
Organizing Words presents a series of essays on some 220 widely used - and much debated - terms in the social sciences, and organization studies. Each essay explores the meanings and uses of the word; and also the controversies they have sparked. The book aims to be a first port of call for students, researchers and scholars who wish to familiarize themselves with these key ideas and use them in their own work. The book is neither an encyclopaedi…
New Faces and New Masks of Today's Consumer
In 1995, we proposed that consumption and contemporary consumerism could not be studied or understood separately from the world of work and production. We proposed that contemporary consumerism was built on the back of what we referred to as `the Fordist Deal'. This deal, pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees, was the promise of ever increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force accepting alienating work. Since that …
The Unmanageable Consumer
'The Unmanageable Consumer has long been one of my favorite books in the sociology of consumption. This long overdue third edition has updated and revised the basic argument in many ways. Most importantly, it now offers a new chapter on the consumer as worker or, more generally, the prosumer. Assign it to your classes (I have...and will again) and read it for your edification.' - George Ritzer, Distinguished University Professor, University of Ma…
Workplace romances in cold and hot organizational climates
Workplace romances and their consequences have been frequently seen as undesirable for organizational performance. The goal of this study was to examine how organizations themselves influence the emergence, development and discourses of workplace romances. Using qualitative fieldwork from three organizations in Israel and four in Taiwan, we examine if and how organizational climate – cold, temperate and hot – influences the ways workplace romance…
For dialogue rather than integration
Stories in Organizational Research
Myths, stories, and organizations
The Journal Strap Line
Glass Cages and Glass Palaces
Max Weber's metaphor of 'the iron cage' has provided an abiding image of organizations during the high noon of modernity. But these organizations-rigid, rational and bureaucratic-may no longer be sustainable in our times. Instead of a preoccupation with efficient production and rational administration, management today is increasingly turning to the consumer as the measure of all things, a consumer who seeks not merely the useful and the function…
Essal
Having indicated some of the recurring difficulties in establishing a conceptual or philosophical link between theory and practice, the author examines the relation between organization theory and the practices of academics, managers and other organizational participants. He argues that this relation is shaped by the way organizational theories are disseminated in the face of an expanding hegemony of consumerization and consumerism. Like other co…
The Unmanaged Organization
This paper argues that within every organization there is a terrain which is not and cannot be managed, in which people, both individually and in groups, can engage in unsupervised, spontaneous activity. This is referred to as the unmanaged organization, a kind of organizational dreamworld in which desires, anxieties and emotions find expressions in highly irrational construc tions. The chief force in this terrain is fantasy and its landmarks inc…
Beyond Happy Families
In this article, the author explores the nature of contemporary organizational controls, the extent to which they can be said to colonize employee subjectivity, and the types of resistance which they generate. Labor process, psychoanalytic, critical theory, and Foucauldian perspectives are juxtaposed and a number of similarities and divergences are noted. It is argued that many of these perspectives prematurely lament the end of employee recalcit…
Turning Facts into Stories and Stories into Facts
This paper analyzes three organizational stories which the author encountered in different work and military organizations. Each story reveals a dual structure, a recital, which varies in different accounts, and a common core, referred to here as the myth. These myths are seen as collective fantasies, fulfilling shared desires and offering either opportunities for cathartic discharge or a partial inoculation against misfortune. It is argued that …
Glass Cages and Glass Palaces
Max Weber's metaphor of 'the iron cage' has provided an abiding image of organizations during the high noon of modernity. But these organizations-rigid, rational and bureaucratic-may no longer be sustainable in our times. Instead of a preoccupation with efficient production and rational administration, management today is increasingly turning to the consumer as the measure of all things, a consumer who seeks not merely the useful and the function…
Meeting God
This paper focuses on a theme which features in numerous organizational stories, in which an "ordinary" member of of an organization comes face to face with the organization's top leader. This theme echoes not only the archetypical religious scene of meeting God as supreme judge, but also several well-known scenes in drama, opera, and literature. Through a psychoanalytic study of this theme, a set of primal phantasies projected by organizational …
Return to Meaning
This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the li…
Job loss and its aftermath among managers and professionals
Based on longitudinal fieldwork with unemployed managers and professionals in their 50s, the article examines the meaning of job loss to these people and charts their subsequent efforts to restore their lives. The article identifies core similarities in their experiences and discerns different narrative strategies through which they have tried to make sense of their dismissal and sustain their selfhood. For all, job loss was a considerable trauma…
An Introduction to the Social Psychology of Insults in Organizations
The author argues that insults are an important social and organizational phenomenon, which causes powerful emotions and enters peoplés personal histories. It is suggested that insults involve a perpetrator, a target and, often, an audience. The intention to insult is not necessary, as some insults are the result of misunderstanding or accident. However, the experience of being gratuitously offended and the corresponding feelings of shame, guilt,…
Engaging with genocide
Genocide has been an enduring and profoundly disturbing feature of history. Yet, scholars of organization and management have approached it in a rather limited and marginal way. In this article, the authors propose that genocide far from constituting a tragic phenomenon at the margins of contemporary society raises questions that go to the heart of organization and management studies. In particular, they argue that genocide represents a challenge…
Essal
Having indicated some of the recurring difficulties in establishing a conceptual or philosophical link between theory and practice, the author examines the relation between organization theory and the practices of academics, managers and other organizational participants. He argues that this relation is shaped by the way organizational theories are disseminated in the face of an expanding hegemony of consumerization and consumerism. Like other co…
On Organisational Stories and Myths
The author explores how events in organisations are turned into stories. Three major types of story are identified and illustrated: the comic, the tragic, and the epic, as well as a number of hybrids. The emotions generated by these stories are explored as well as some of the meanings which they reveal. The author then discusses why people espouse particular stories with almost religious fervour and suggests that organisational stories are essent…
New Faces and New Masks of Today's Consumer
In 1995, we proposed that consumption and contemporary consumerism could not be studied or understood separately from the world of work and production. We proposed that contemporary consumerism was built on the back of what we referred to as `the Fordist Deal'. This deal, pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees, was the promise of ever increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force accepting alienating work. Since that …
Psychoanalytic Contributions to the Study of the Emotional Life of Organizations
In light of increasing interest in organizational emotions, this article argues for a reintegration of psychoanalytic scholarship into the study of organizations. A brief presentation of social constructionist approaches to emotions in organizations is followed by a presentation of major psychoanalytic contributions to the study of emotions at individual, group, and organizational levels. The author argues for a rapprochement between construction…
Workplace romances in cold and hot organizational climates
Workplace romances and their consequences have been frequently seen as undesirable for organizational performance. The goal of this study was to examine how organizations themselves influence the emergence, development and discourses of workplace romances. Using qualitative fieldwork from three organizations in Israel and four in Taiwan, we examine if and how organizational climate – cold, temperate and hot – influences the ways workplace romance…
The State of Critique in Organizational Theory
Cet article examine l'etat actuel de la critique dans le champ de la theorie organisationnelle. Il evoque la sainte alliance conclue entre les entreprises et les consommateurs, aux depens des travailleurs et de la citoyennete. L'A. deplore une esthetisation de la critique post-moderniste, axee davantage sur l'experience singuliere que sur la tradition marxiste, humaniste ou rationaliste
The Journal Strap Line
Work, consumption and capitalism
We know not to judge a book by its cover, but Lynne Pettinger’s book has a particularly eye-catching one – an image of denim cloth shot close up and realistic enough to be taken for real, the title
Bridging the contradictions of social constructionism and psychoanalysis in a study of workplace emotions in India
This paper makes a contribution to the study of emotions in organizations by offering a systematic juxtaposition and cross-fertilization of psychoanalytic and social constructionist approaches. These two traditions have found it hard to communicate in the past when addressing organizational emotions. Points of similarity and tension between them are discussed in connection with two critical case studies of female Indian managers discussing their …
The marriage of story and metaphor
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due in part to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organization
For dialogue rather than integration
Organizations, from Concepts to Constructs
The authors argue that difficulties in defining organizations arise from the fact that organization is not a concept, but a cognitive, emotional and symbolic construct. The way different individuals experience organizations depends on their psychological character, a product of their psychological development. The paper develops a psychoanalytic approach which links individual character with experiences of organizations; it is argued that some in…
The Fate of the Unconscious in the Human Sciences
In this essay the author seeks to answer some of the criticisms of Freud's central concepts, theories, and methods that have been raised by twentieth century philosophy. He argues that many of these concepts and theories, particularly the concept of the unconscious, represent indispensable assumptions shared by the human sciences, even when they are not directly addressed by them. Further, he argues that in Freud's ideas we find one of the most a…
Collective Bargaining
THERE is a curious consensus among many social scientists that collective bargaining marked an important change in the area of industrial relations. The emphasis on collective bargaining as the key to understanding many important issues in industrial relations may be traced back to around the turn of the century, to the Webbs’ “ scientific analysis of trade unionism ” in their ZndustriaE Democracy. The theory of collective bargaining was develope…
The Fate of the Unconscious in the Human Sciences
In this essay the author seeks to answer some of the criticisms of Freud's central concepts, theories, and methods that have been raised by twentieth century philosophy. He argues that many of these concepts and theories, particularly the concept of the unconscious, represent indispensable assumptions shared by the human sciences, even when they are not directly addressed by them. Further, he argues that in Freud's ideas we find one of the most a…
Discontents and Illusions
Freud and Society
Freud and Society
The Protestant Work Ethic
Turning Facts into Stories and Stories into Facts
This paper analyzes three organizational stories which the author encountered in different work and military organizations. Each story reveals a dual structure, a recital, which varies in different accounts, and a common core, referred to here as the myth. These myths are seen as collective fantasies, fulfilling shared desires and offering either opportunities for cathartic discharge or a partial inoculation against misfortune. It is argued that …
On Organisational Stories and Myths
The author explores how events in organisations are turned into stories. Three major types of story are identified and illustrated: the comic, the tragic, and the epic, as well as a number of hybrids. The emotions generated by these stories are explored as well as some of the meanings which they reveal. The author then discusses why people espouse particular stories with almost religious fervour and suggests that organisational stories are essent…
Paradigms of Organizations
This paper addresses a `paradigmatic gap' between current thinking on the nature of behaviour in organizations and the introductory organization behaviour textbook. It is argued that recent academic discourses, influenced by postmodernism and feminism, present organizations as fragile, unpredictable and discontinuous. However, the traditional organizational behaviour textbook continues to present an image of a solid, ordered and predictable organ…
The Unmanageable Consumer
Introduction The Faces of the Consumer The Emergence of Contemporary Consumerism The Consumer as Chooser The Consumer as Communicator The Consumer as Explorer The Consumer as Identity-Seeker The Consumer Hedonist or Artist? The Consumer as Victim The Consumer as Rebel The Consumer as Activist The Consumer as Citizen The Vanishing Consumer
The Unmanaged Organization
This paper argues that within every organization there is a terrain which is not and cannot be managed, in which people, both individually and in groups, can engage in unsupervised, spontaneous activity. This is referred to as the unmanaged organization, a kind of organizational dreamworld in which desires, anxieties and emotions find expressions in highly irrational construc tions. The chief force in this terrain is fantasy and its landmarks inc…
Experiencing Organizations
Functions and Ceremonies
What Does it Mean to be a Manager
Meeting God
This paper focuses on a theme which features in numerous organizational stories, in which an "ordinary" member of of an organization comes face to face with the organization's top leader. This theme echoes not only the archetypical religious scene of meeting God as supreme judge, but also several well-known scenes in drama, opera, and literature. Through a psychoanalytic study of this theme, a set of primal phantasies projected by organizational …
Psychoanalytic Contributions to the Study of the Emotional Life of Organizations
In light of increasing interest in organizational emotions, this article argues for a reintegration of psychoanalytic scholarship into the study of organizations. A brief presentation of social constructionist approaches to emotions in organizations is followed by a presentation of major psychoanalytic contributions to the study of emotions at individual, group, and organizational levels. The author argues for a rapprochement between construction…
An Introduction to the Social Psychology of Insults in Organizations
The author argues that insults are an important social and organizational phenomenon, which causes powerful emotions and enters peoplés personal histories. It is suggested that insults involve a perpetrator, a target and, often, an audience. The intention to insult is not necessary, as some insults are the result of misunderstanding or accident. However, the experience of being gratuitously offended and the corresponding feelings of shame, guilt,…
Organizations, from Concepts to Constructs
The authors argue that difficulties in defining organizations arise from the fact that organization is not a concept, but a cognitive, emotional and symbolic construct. The way different individuals experience organizations depends on their psychological character, a product of their psychological development. The paper develops a psychoanalytic approach which links individual character with experiences of organizations; it is argued that some in…
Management, Administration and Critique in the 21st Century? 1
The author argues that the twentieth century has been characterized by a decline in influence and prestige of administration and a concomitant rise of management. Management has expanded largely on the back of the consumer, its political and ideological champion. By contrast, the champion of administration, the citizen, has become an increasingly distant figure, whose outlook, concern and practices are continuously displaced by consumerism. While…
Beyond Happy Families
In this article, the author explores the nature of contemporary organizational controls, the extent to which they can be said to colonize employee subjectivity, and the types of resistance which they generate. Labor process, psychoanalytic, critical theory, and Foucauldian perspectives are juxtaposed and a number of similarities and divergences are noted. It is argued that many of these perspectives prematurely lament the end of employee recalcit…
Storytelling in Organizations
Myths, stories, and folklore are part of the fabric and life of all organizations, enabling us to understand, identify, and communicate the character of the organization — its ambitions, conflicts, and peculiarities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork of storytelling in five organizations, this book argues that stories open valuable windows into the emotional and symbolic lives of organizations. By collecting stories in different organizations, by li…
The State of Critique in Organizational Theory
Cet article examine l'etat actuel de la critique dans le champ de la theorie organisationnelle. Il evoque la sainte alliance conclue entre les entreprises et les consommateurs, aux depens des travailleurs et de la citoyennete. L'A. deplore une esthetisation de la critique post-moderniste, axee davantage sur l'experience singuliere que sur la tradition marxiste, humaniste ou rationaliste
Essal
Having indicated some of the recurring difficulties in establishing a conceptual or philosophical link between theory and practice, the author examines the relation between organization theory and the practices of academics, managers and other organizational participants. He argues that this relation is shaped by the way organizational theories are disseminated in the face of an expanding hegemony of consumerization and consumerism. Like other co…
Stories in Organizational Research
Myths, stories, and organizations
Sociology (37 works) · Political science (29 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (26 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Aesthetics (13 works) · Social science (13 works) · Law (12 works)